art with a spiritual flavour | the more-or-less official blog of pacific theatre

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Jan 15-19, 22-26: HAMLET by Shadows & Dreams

The folks who brought you A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM in the park in New Westminster last summer are at it again, including Kerri Norris, Frank Nickel and Stephen Elcheshen, all familiar from the PT stage.

Betrayal, Madness and Revenge, in Ninety MinutesShadows and Dreams Theatre Company Presents:

HamletbyWilliam Shakespeare

"How these things came about: so shall they hearOf carnal, bloody, and unnatural actsOf accidental judgments, casual slaughtersOf deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fall'n on the inventors' heads: all this can I truly deliver."

The King of Denmark has been dead a month, but hisspirit does not rest easy. Hamlet, the young Princeof Denmark, should have succeeded his father, butinstead the King's brother Claudius has seized the throne. (Not to mention Hamlet's mother, the widowedQueen.) Yet Hamlet's sorrow at this betrayal turnsquickly to anger when he learns that Claudius may nothave just profited from the late King's death, but caused it. His father's restless ghost sets Hamlet ona dangerous path to discover the truth of the King'sdeath, weave a trap for Claudius, avoid the snaresthat lay in wait for him and ultimately exact a grim revenge that destroys far more than he intended.

Presented by just seven actors in an uninterruptedhour and a half this production strips Shakespeare'slongest play down to its dark heart of sorrow, angerand sudden tragic violence.